Strategies organizations can leverage when building a culture of inclusion.

By Debbie Bolla

More and more, today’s candidates and employees alike are looking to work for an organization with a positive inclusive company culture that is based on values and encourages collaboration and belonging. In fact, 88% of job seekers say that healthy work culture is vital for success.

“Organizations need to ensure their culture is really reflecting their own values,” says Tiffany Williams, Global DE&I Leader, RPO for Korn Ferry. “This will lead to an inclusive, thriving productive, collaborative organization and team.”

A good place to start is to analyze current organizational culture through a full end-to-end assessment process. HR leaders should first find out the answers to these types of questions:

  • What is currently driving company culture?
  • What are the organization’s objectives for their company culture?
  • What problems and challenges are they trying to solve?
  • What are the biggest pain points for the organization?
  • What’s going to yield the highest impact?

Armed with this information, HR can begin to assess and analyze. “Organizations have to be strategic even in their approach in how to prioritize their strategies and where they’re going to start,” say Williams. “Organizations that want to adhere to and be inclusive in their approach need to make sure that they are creating the right process design models.”

HR executives should leverage a variety of approaches when gathering additional feedback that will be critical in culture building. Surveying current employees provides a bird’s eye view into opportunities for improvement.

“Staff experience surveys are going to be a go-to in terms of really getting a good understanding of what current constituents feel so that organizations can get a temperature check on what’s really being experienced,” Williams explains.

She recommends breaking surveys out among different subgroups in order to capture the diversity that currently exists. This can help guide the effort by identifying and mitigating challenges. Listening sessions and focus groups also provide a safe setting to have conversations about culture and even encourage difficult ones.

“HR leaders need to bring multiple voices to the table, not only to identify the challenges, but to identify the solutions,” says Williams. “They have to make sure it’s broad so that they are inclusive in their approach.”

C-suite leadership is another important voice to ensuring an inclusive process. “Leaders have to be at the forefront of driving the cultural shift,” she explains. Communication and transparency around initiatives are key to an authentic approach.

If organizations take the right steps, they will have the opportunity to create a strategic roadmap to build an inclusive culture.

 

Tags: Company Culture, Diversity & Inclusion, RPO & Staffing, Talent Acquisition

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